Entering Innkeeping, Part 2. Goals

Last week I shared thoughts on bed and breakfast or Innkeeping as a lifestyle choice. Have you considered your own lifestyle needs and how they may, or may not match that of an innkeeper?

As I said, enthusiasm for a project is a wonderful thing. Any of us can get caught up in that enthusiasm and find ourselves involved at a different level than initially planned. Define your goals. Don't casually allow yourself to deviate from those goals. If you decide to change your goals, do so consciously, keep them handy, and refer to them. Let’s look at defining specific goals and what the industry has discovered are the motivators for those who have entered innkeeping and found success. Remember, you’re looking for a return on your investment of your time, your energy, your money.

We’ve been able to define four general categories of motivations. They include:
• Lifestyle. It's a place you want to live, an environment you enjoy, and you hope to have the occasional guest in an effort to expand your cultural experiences. Some people with this motivation or goal, choose to participate in house swapping with fellow home owners from around the world. If you live in a highly desirable location i.e. major international city or resort area, you find house swapping a better choice than operating a B&B or Inn.
• Supplemental Income. While cultural experiences are all well and good, you'd like to make a little supplemental income. Airbnb has become very popular with this group. They can rent available space to travelers on a casual basis, making a little cash sharing space they don’t necessarily use in their existing homes.
• Career. This is a career, your primary financial source. Just you might consider a career in law, teaching, retail, health care, innkeeping could be your career of choice, either by owning and operating your own business, or work as a general manager for someone else. Either way, as your primary source of income, there are higher financial stakes in this goal than in the prior more casual motivations.
• Real Estate investment for substantial return on investment. Real estate continues to provide substantial return on investment for the shrewd business person. Buying distressed property or businesses, using business, design, operational skills and experiences to increase their value and then reselling them can provide good returns given proper timing, patience, and economic climate.
Goals run a continuum of possibilities. While yours may not fit exactly into one or these categories, most can clearly identify with one or more of these categories.

Once you’re able to identify your goals, you can then begin to do the research that will help you reach them. Are you looking for a home in a destination location that you can share with others to broaden your life experiences? Do want to make a little extra cash selling space in your current home on a somewhat limited casual basis? Are you exploring career choices? Are you searching for an existing business, or developable real estate to be used for your new exterprise? Clearly set your goal. A good friend kept this quote on his desk: “A man without a plan is planning to fail”.

Next week we’re going to explore the research that will help you refine your goals, gain perspective on the lifestyle, help you find your comfort levels, and narrow your choices, as you pursue your enterprise.

I have a question.

My father stressed a value for truth in my upbringing. On countless occasions he stressed truth. “Tell the truth.” “People hate liars”. “Lies always catch up with you”. My mother told all of us to “Just be nice”. So I always try to be the good son who wants to be nice and to tell the truth. Most of my family and friends were much the same. I thought everyone aspired to at least those two very simple values. Through the years of course I’ve met people who clearly didn’t share those values, but I thought they were the exception. They were the bad guys i.e. robbers, rapists, thieves and villians. I suppose I’m just a naïve idiot, but every day brings with it questions about the truth. Just today I have these:

1. The US House leader said that he’s “watched them kick the can” of budget issues and fiscal responsibility down the street for the 22 years he’s been in Washington and that “it’s gonna stop now”. So I have a question. Where the hell was he in those 22 years? Watching from the men’s room window? He also explained that it was the administration’s and senate democrat’s responsibility to come up with a feasible plan. So again I have a question. He, with his 22 years of experience, is idealess?

2. The USPS announced that Saturday mail delivery would have to end because the organization has lost $16 or $18 BILLION in 2011, and continues to loose money at a rate of $25 million a month much in part because so many of us are paying bills and communicating online. Of course that caused a rucas about the legality of such a move. A Congresswoman from Maine has suggested that such a move be put off for two more years, until the USPS tries to work out its financial issues in other ways. Others think we should continue to “study” the problem. The greeting card association is very upset because they know with certainty all Americans hope to get personal mail when they go to their mailboxes. I have a question. Really?

3. A Congressman was reported to express his, and the Republican party’s concern for the families of immigrant families in an effort to negotiate a compromise for immigration reform. I have a question. Since when? The most recent republican presidential candidate ran on the republican platform that supported “self deportation”. Doesn’t’ that mean, we need to make things ugly enough so that the illegals go back to wherever it is they came?

4. The Boy Scouts of American (BSA) decided to not decide a change in the organization’s stand on gay membership. I heard Texan Governor Rick what’s his name voice his objection to such a change. A church leader also expressed a similar objection and went on to say that if “they” want to have such an organization with gays, “they” can start one. I have a question. Is there indisputable documentation that the founders of the current BSA were in fact, not gay? I’m not suggesting they were, to know, or to suggest anyone does after all it was 100+ years ago, but it may be important information to have. Unless we know, it’s quite possible “they” already organized such an organization all those many years ago.

Back to my original question, where’s the truth? Here’s what I see:
1. Any one in a real job who watch’s “them kick the can” down the road shouldn’t be employed, not for 22 years, and not in a leadership position of any organization, certainly not as the leader of the US House. Let’s stop paying people to watch.
2. We don’t have any money! At my house, when there’s no money, we don’t get to “study” the problem, nor do we get to postpone any action for two years. If we can’t afford it, we go without. I can wait for my greeting card till Monday….seriously.
3. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the quality of these folks lives until the stats of the recent presidential election indicated Hispanics have become a powerful voting block. Get these folks in the voting and TAX paying community of citizens so they can help pay the frickin’ bills!
4. There are gays everywhere, have been for centuries. Let’s stay out of one another’s bedrooms. There may be secrets there that we really don’t want to know about one another. I mean, really. If the degradation of societal values is a worry, then focus on liars, cheats, thieves, killers, child molesters, and rapists, none of which is exclusive to the gay community. If instilling values in the leaders of tomorrow is a goal, then teach them love, mutual respect, honor and truth. Don’t teach them to lie. We have plenty of that.

Entering Innkeeping....Part 1. Lifestyle

As I’ve said, people regularly tell me they think they want to have their own B&B and I’m asked how to go about it. I’ve promised five Mondays to break the process down into easy steps of consideration. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of the individual steps because taken together they will provide a good basis for your decision to work toward your own business or to look at other opportunities.

As a first step let’s take a look at the lifestyle of someone who not only operates his/her own business, but specifically a bed and breakfast or small inn. This is a centuries old business. Let’s not forget Mary and Joseph and the whole “no room at the Inn” thing. Down through the ages, the core business hasn’t changed that much. An Innkeeper has overnight space available for the traveling public. The traveler pays a fee for the use of the space. Food has often times been served. I use the word space because in times past it was not uncommon for the innkeeper to divide available space down to parts of a single bed. I use the word food, because again in times past, travelers weren’t quite as particular for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Wholesome sustenance was the priority of the time. But I digress. Tired people needed a place for rest and nourishment, and there were Innkeepers ready to provide those things in whatever fashion.

The owners of bed and breakfasts and small Inns, either in metropolitan or rural areas generally refer to themselves as Innkeepers. Today Innkeeping is a wonderful career many people have undertaken with great spiritual and financial success. It has also been romanticized to some degree. There have been those who are disenchanted soon after they enter innkeeping. There are some harsh realities to owning and operating your own business, particularly when you must depend on others to help with that business. I know a couple who spent months, even years, exploring all sorts of bed and breakfast business opportunities. After all their research they found their perfect dream business. These bright eyed, eager entrepreneurs became angry and bitter over the daily grind of business ownership in just a few short months. They soon had the business back on the market, and were ending their personal relationship as well.

Realistically, if your enterprise is successful, you could find yourself up at 6:00am every morning for the rest of your working life getting breakfast ready for hungry overnight guests. If you’re the sort of person who’s not awake until their third cup of coffee, sometime after 9:00am……well…..Houston….we have a problem.

If you have not been an entrepreneur before, it's important to understand the seemingly simple differences from the more traditional employer/employee career paths. Entrepreneurs are always doing business, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The responsibility is around the clock, 365 days a year, ultimately responsible for each and every decision involving the enterprise. Innkeepers are generally very hands on owners, oftentimes responding to reservations information, greeting & entertaining guests, cooking, cleaning, decorating & redecorating, repairs & maintenance, gardening, marketing, business planning, etc. They may have staff, but when the housekeeper, that one and only housekeeper, isn’t able to get to work, guess who’s cleaning guestrooms?

On one hand, you may feel a sense of emancipation. The freedom to determine your destiny, to succeed or fail by your own means might be a particularly important personal goal. On the other hand, you don’t get to go home at the end of your shift. Some have found that kind of total commitment to be too heavy a burden to bear, day in and day out, year in and year out.

Each of us has life goals. Your interest in innkeeping has been sparked at least in part by one of your goals. Your perception of an element of the lifestyle may have sparked your interest in it.
• You might be attracted to a particular part of the world and operating a B&B in that location is a logical plan of action i.e. you love the mountains, and can live and earn a living in the environment you relish.
• Perhaps owning a large spacious house is important to you. You love to have family and friends in. You’re a people person. Innkeeping would be an extension of that entertaining, and operating that house as a B&B for at least part of the time, making a little money, will help you afford that kind of home.
• Maybe you are expecting the enterprise to provide a long term career with substantial financial benefit throughout your career.
• There are also those who see the business as a career and also as a major real estate investment whereby they anticipate a dramatic return on their real estate investment.

Over the years, the industry has been able to identify those four general areas of interest that draw people to the industry. Again, they are:
• Location. Where you want to live
• Love of entertaining family and friends
• Career choice with substantial benefits.
• Real estate investment with anticipated dramatic financial return.
It’s important to recognize that many people who are drawn to this business niche for real estate investment purposes, often times have a specific project in mind. They have an old building that must be saved, a neighborhood that needs revitalizing, an empty city block that needs to be filled, or an existing building that should be repurposed. They look to the bed and breakfast business as a way of utilizing the building.

Enthusiasm for a project is a wonderful thing. Any of us can get caught up in that enthusiasm and find ourselves involved at a different level than initially planned. Define your goals. Don't casually allow yourself to deviate from those goals. If you decide to change your goals, do so consciously, keep them handy, and refer to them.

Next week we’re going to explore specific goal details. In the meantime, take an inventory of your life, the way you want or prefer to live. Does it match inkeeping?

If you always do what you always did…..

Over the years I facilitated meetings for a variety of organizations who were planning for their future. Somewhere during the course of their discussions I generally would use the quote, “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” I can’t site the source. For that matter, I’m not entirely sure it’s accurately repeated. But it invariably got the folks in the room to open their imaginations to other possibilities to what they knew from past experiences.

I’m told we all dream, but that the frequency with which we remember those dreams is different from person to person. Very early this morning I woke from a very vivid dream. I woke in a cold sweat saying to myself, “this is not where you should be. Why are you back here? Who are these people? You can’t be here. You can’t be in the past.” I can’t remember dreaming but a handful of times. Never has a dream been this vivid, certainly not this much a nightmare. I got up from bed and walked around my house to make sure I knew where I was. I got a glass of water from the kitchen. I was exhausted! Never has a dream haunted me for much of the next day. Even now the details are fresh and clear.

I believe in change; personally, professionally, in my communities. I’ve read all sorts of materials about change; being open to change, managing change, making change, changing for a new economy. We can plan for change. We can be prepared for change. We can work toward change. But, how do we navigate meaningful change? I suspect there are many who need to navigate life changes.

Over the years, we’ve gotten ourselves in situations that are not entirely satisfying, i.e. business, job, fellow workers, boss, living circumstance, habits. We’ve paced back ‘n forth sufficiently that the rut is deep and seemingly impossible to climb from. We could be open to change, but navigating it seems at least too difficult or at worst, impossible. What I have to remind myself is that change is a constant. If I don’t want to do what I’ve always done, because I don’t merely want what I’ve always got, then I must embrace and welcome the changes that are part of every day. I don't want to be in the past. I must continue to explore ways that I fit into today and into all the days to come, to find my place in an ever changing world.

Now that’s NOT what I’m talking about.

I can’t get the concept of delighting and surprising my customers, guests, or members out of my thoughts. Every day as a customer I hear how I’m going to be delighted or surprised. Just yesterday the message recording from a vendor went on and on about how important I was to them, about excellent customer service being the core of their value statement, how I would receive premium service from the next available customer service operator and that my wait was estimated at six minutes. Later in the day I was reading classified employment ads and a hospitality company is using as their marketing tag “committed to delighting customers every day”. I’ve visited a number of this chain’s outlets. Trust me when I say, I’m not a difficult customer. Life is too short to get my boxers all up in a bind over a meal out. But you can also trust me when I say, I’ve never been delighted by this company’s product or their customer service.

When I talk about delighting and surprising customers, I don’t think we have to go to some obscure level of attention. I think we need to simply treat others as we would like to be treated. I’ve had to occasion to go to a bar where bar snacks are served at the actual bar, but are not provided at the tables. I love it when my server brings a bowl of snacks to my table or at least asks if they could bring some to the table. When I’m in line at the hardware checkout, I love it when the owner/manager opens the second register and tells his customers that he’d gladly take care of them. When I go to pick up an order at a local company, if I have more than one bag, a clerk always at least offers to carry the packages to the car for me.

What I’m NOT talking about is corporate mumbo jumbo marketing tags with no substance. Don’t tell me you care and then send my call to a non-English speaking rep after I wait 2 minutes listening to your propaganda and then to crappy loud music for six more minutes. Anyone can put that crap on the letterhead or job posting. What I AM talking about is genuine care for their fellow human being, and taking care of one another. That delights me. Let me put it another way. If you’re gonna show up to the dance, don’t stand there and tell me about your years of dance lessons, be prepared to dance!

To Surprise and Delight

So every Sunday for years I’ve listened to public radio’s Krista Tippett’s interviews. First when I was doing breakfast for guests at my Inn. It was a very casual laid morning, with a buffet of coffee cakes, muffins, sweet butter, house jam & jellies, juices, and coffee as a first course, there was always time between making the next set of omelets. Since leaving that life, on Sunday mornings I’m more able to focus on the entire program and now appreciate them even more. Last Sunday she interviewed Seth Godin. Now I knew of Mr. Godin, but only vaguely. He was that internet guy, writer, thoughtful…yeah yeah yeah. However, since listening on Sunday, I’ve gone to his website, signed up for his daily blog updates, because there are a few of his remarks that just stick. You know those ideas that come into your mind, and for some reason, your mind won’t let go!

He described the change from a small business economy some decades ago, to that of big business where my parents and others of their generation went to work. They enjoyed the stability of a big brother employer, steady job, steady income, steady benefits, unheard of health benefits!, just do as told, when as told, and expect to enjoy the golden years. And it worked. There are lots of retirement communities, many in warmer climates, where folks enjoy their later years.

My 85 year old mother shared an interesting story Sunday while we were listening. She was a factory worker for some 30 years. At a meeting with management she and others were told to understand how lucky they were to be working all those years at one job, because the future generation would certainly not have that luxury. They would work an average of 14 jobs in that time. Hmmmm….everything makes me think.

As Mr. Godin shared, times are again changing, as there are fewer and fewer big business employers and we are once again left to our own to create our own futures. How frightening is that! But here we are…..many trying to earn a living, at some enterprise that will earn them at least sufficient money to put food on the table and a roof over their family’s heads.

Here’s the part that has caught my attention. In this new world order, we can’t just show up. From Seth Godin’s Sunday blog, just “Showing up and taking notes isn't your job. Your job is to surprise and delight and to change the agenda. Your job is to escalate, reset expectations and make us delighted….” Surprise and delight; that’s what I have stuck in my mind. It’s a tall order, well worth pursuing, but how on earth?

“I think I want to have my own B&B”…. oh really?

People regularly tell me they think they want to have their own B&B and I’m asked how to go about it. Just this weekend the subject came up again. As the economy continues to change there are fewer big brother businesses, and we’re individually required to create our own opportunities. I’ve always referred people to the Professional Association of Innkeepers or to a few real estate business consultants who offer workshops to help folks get started.

However, there would appear to be a preliminary need for people to make some choices before they invest their valuable time, energy, and money to explore the business of Innkeeping in earnest. I’m going to break the process down into a five areas of discovery and post them here over the next few weeks. I’ll explore these five areas:
• Lifestyle. This is a century’s old niche business with a very specific lifestyle. We’ll explore the way innkeepers live their lives while taking care of their guests. They are often times sharing the same spaces as their guests, which can lead to some challenges that require a very special disposition.
• Goals. Everyone who considers their own business should consider the specific goals for their business. Is it a primary or secondary income goal? Tax planning, goal? Etc. The answers to those questions and a host of other goal questions will help avoid bad decisions.
• Research. Folks often come to the idea for their business without much research. I’ll explore the type of research that will help you understand the validity of your dream business.
• Due Diligence. What are the questions to ask? The experience to get? The education to have? The “expertise” to trust?
• Plan Development. Writing a full fledged business plan will help anyone considering their dream business solidify their ideas into a road map for success. Does your plan reflect your goals?

Look for these posts each of the five next Mondays. At the end of these five posts, you’ll either decide this business if not for you, or you’ll come away with a clear action plan to further pursue your dreams.